So where do I start?!
We’ve been watching Cleo’s brother, Jake, for the last couple of days. It was an arrangement partially made in appreciation of our friend watching Cleo at the last minute while we were up in New York for funeral stuff all week, and also partially as a reluctant trial for us to see if it would be right for us to adopt Jake and have a second dog in our home.
Not for nothing, but so far the case isn’t too strong in his favor!
It’s been something that both Sara and our friend who’s been fostering him have wanted to see for a while, but I’ve always been adamant up until now that I just thought that two dogs would be too much … that my evening walks wouldn’t be the same, and that our house would become hopelessly trashed, etc, etc… I guess I finally felt an ounce of sympathy after dealing with Sara’s grandma passing the other week, so I suggested that we give him a try for a few weeks and see how he does. And honestly, we were kinda hoping that maybe having a buddy around would kind of calm Cleo down a bit so that she isn’t so hyper and jumpy all of the time, but so far, that’s been precisely the opposite of the effect that has been witnessed here in the Sevener household! 🙁
You name it – there’s been fighting, there’s been peeing on the carpet, there’s been destruction of shoes, and at this point he’s only been here for three days!!! We’re still trying to give him the benefit of the doubt – at least 2-3 weeks minimum before we really make a decision – but it’s a little disheartening to feel like we’re moving backwards after having long-since talked Cleo out of her shoe-gnawing days. We did have a handful of incidents while we were gone where she peed inside, but honestly I think a lot of that was probably just confusion for not knowing where we were disappearing to for weeks at a time! Now that we’re back, though, I’d appreciate it if the pee went outside in the grass as opposed to inside all over my nice, clean carpet…
Also, that magical dual-leash do-jigger you see above – I’m honestly surprised to see just how well it sorta worked! I’ve officially used it twice so far and they most definitely do get tangled on occasion, especially if they both fall back simultaneously on opposite sides of me! But it’s definitely loads easier than trying to hold two separate leashes – there’s just no way that that was happening again, and at least this keeps them relatively close to one another as opposed to splitting me down the middle like a wishbone! My one big concern – if we do end up keeping Jake, I’ll definitely want to seek out a heavier duty version of it, not so much for the straps, but frankly I don’t know how much I can trust those little, metal clips holding onto their harnesses – seems like one good, coordinated tug and that metal would snap like it’s nobody’s business! 😯
Well, that’s all for now – I’ll try to remember to post more next week after we see if time helps him to settle in a bit. Something tells me that having two dogs in the house is going to make handing out candy for trick-or-treaters a whole lot of fun… 🙄